


Remember the Name

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Dreams, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts as something he does for Roxas, a memory of a witch breathing back to life because someone remembered her name. He takes his keyblade and as he goes through the worlds, he etches Axel's names there. Works them into the very framework. A jagged word in the hull of Hook's ship, something graceful and careful and looping atop the tower in Twilight, because it's Roxas who holds the keyblade. Roxas at the forefront and Sora watching his own hand tremble as Roxas traces the name there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember the Name

**Author's Note:**

> So, I tend to get plot bunnies when I listen to my ipod on the back deck and chain smoke. Inspired by [Remember t](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsIbBIoN1-M)[he Name](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFXpOz7GmjE). First link is to the Kingdom Hearts vid, which is 30 seconds and the second is an Avatar: TLA vid of the entire song. They're both amazing.

It starts as something that Sora does for Roxas. 

The worlds should be closed—sealed off, locked and bolted and he thinks that he shouldn't look back. But things change. There will always be bad guys, there will always be _something_ out there that wants the worlds to cower, and thus, the worlds will always need a hero.

The gummi ship is as familiar as an old and cherished family car, the steering gears warm to his touch. The plastic, the gummi, the gears and the levers are Sora's, and they know him like the keyblade knows him. It isn't difficult to make that transition, to go from being that weird kid in high school who everyone forgot to being the keyblade master again.

Something in his chest tugs— _blisters_ and it's nice to see them again. It's wonderful to see the worlds he's saved, the way that they're flourishing again. Rip out the Heartless at the root, spread a coating of top soil, and you've got a blossoming world—the gashes in its heart healed save for the most miniscule of scars. 

In Radiant Garden, Yuffie greets him with an enthusiastic hug and a kiss to the cheek—Leon with a nod and a faint smile. Ariel screeches and launches herself into the water, her dress soaking up the sea and weighing her down. But she giggles, and then she laughs, and when she says "Sora, I missed you," it's almost like she's singing.

Hercules and Meg are doing well, settling into their own lives. No gods or underworlds, just an aging hero, his beautiful wife, and their lovely daughter- Meg's eyes and Herc's red hair and Zeus' grin. Mulan smiles at him over tea and Shang laughs, offering his wife an affectionate kiss to the cheek as he tells Sora of how Mulan is the Emperor's secretary, or something like it. 

Alice has a new dress when he finds her, and she's grown up- tall and willowy, blonde hair cut to her shoulders and a hat perched atop her head. She has a lovely red headed woman at her side—calculating blue eyes and a smile hidden at the corner of her lips. Sora watches the way they walk together, the red head with her arm linked with Alice's or a dainty hand pressed to the small of her back. They tuck their heads close together when they talk, and when Alice asks for some time alone with him, the girl kisses Alice on her nose as she leaves. Sora grins at Alice and Alice grins back. They talk of Wonderland and how she misses it, but how she also doesn't, not really. She's found her own wonderland now.

He sees Pinocchio and Geppetto, Belle and the prince whose not really a beast any longer—Peter and his boys, Wendy in her London, Cinderella and Aurora and Jasmine and Aladdin, who laughs, claps Sora on the back, and tells him to never ever address him as Sultan. 

On his return trip to Radiant Garden, Merlin presses a book into his hands and Sora greets Pooh with a smile and a laugh.

He sees Donald and Goofy, and laughs when he sees them in their rightful places—Donald as Court Sorcerer and Goofy as the King's highest knight. Mickey himself greets Sora with a grin and tells him to tell Riku that he said hello.

It's when he visits Twilight Town, with its red-yellow-orange sunsets and tall clock tower that things start.

Roxas is always with him now. He'd never quite meshed back right, a part of Sora that's forever out of sync with the rest of him. He's there in Sora's head when the gummi ship gets too quiet, and it's Roxas who regales him with a sardonic commentary of all the oddly shaped asteroids. He's there when Sora feels himself coming apart, when the worlds get too much. It's Roxas who tells him "C'mon, Sora, it's about time we went home." 

And when he dreams, it's Roxas's dreams. Sometimes he's there, just one long stretch of white, endless dreamspace where they sit on the floor and talk about where Sora's going to go next, what he's going to do, if maybe he can pick himself up some sea salt ice cream because Roxas misses the taste.

Other times, it's just Roxas _dreaming._ Smoke and ash and the corner of a smile caught between his teeth, the sound of Demyx's laugh, a page of Larxene's favorite book. Sometimes Namine's in his dreams; not _really_ Namine, because she's in Kairi's head, not his, but a memory of her. Sometimes she's sketching, and other times she's telling Roxas stories, her dress tucked daintily beneath her knees and her sandals kicked off beside them. 

Even more often, Xion is _actually_ there with him. It's strange, because she's not always _all there._ She wasn't like Roxas. For all she loved and lost and regretted, she went willingly. She's more in time with Sora, more _Sora_ , and when she'd merged, she'd done so fully. So she's there, she giggles with him and tells him about that one time that Axel and she had gone down to the water of the world they were in and how one of the guy's on the beach had taken one look at their coats and scoffed at them. How he'd tried to wheedle them into "surfing lessons" and how silly Axel had looked up there on that board, skin too white and hair too red and entirely out of his element.

But mostly it's just Axel—always Axel. An Axel who grins at Roxas and tells him about sunsets, another who presses gentle kisses to his lips, another who tells him with a soft smile, more memory than dream, "I think I love you."

There's ash and the residue of burnt wood, the bitter taste of gasoline, and the smell of burning hair. There's slick kisses and tight hugs and quiet embraces in the dark.

So it starts as something he does for Roxas, a memory of a witch breathing back to life because someone remembered her name. He takes his keyblade and as he goes through the worlds, he etches Axel's names there. Works them into the very framework. A jagged word in the hull of Hook's ship, something graceful and careful and looping atop the tower in Twilight, because it's Roxas who holds the keyblade. Roxas at the forefront and Sora watching his own hand tremble as Roxas traces the name there.

It's in Ariel's grotto and in one of the guest rooms of her new home, in the Underworld and etched into the gold of one of the gates to Olympia. Sometimes, just to be careful, they use his other name- the one that Roxas just barely knows. The one that his tongue trips over and cause his hands to shake, because if their experience with Nobodies has taught them anything it's that the Nobody is not always quite the same as the Somebody.

It starts as something he does for Roxas, but as the years pass—as the memories from Roxas sink into the marrow of Sora's spine, it becomes something that he does for _them._

When he's twenty three, Riku and Kairi get married. Riku blushes when he asks Sora to be his best man and Sora is so speechless that it's Roxas who opens their mouth and says, "Jesus Christ, of course he will."

Kairi is lovely in her gown, smiling and blushing, tears in her eyes when she says "I do." 

Afterward, she dances with the mayor, with her _father_ —who then passes her over to Riku. It just makes sense when she grins and, ignoring all the scandalized looks, pulls Sora into the dance too. The three of them dance, and they take turns spinning and dipping her until she giggles and claims that she's dizzy. Riku doesn't miss a beat, just shrugs and dips Sora low instead.

It's fantastic, the happiest Sora's been in years, and later, once Riku and Kairi have grown tired of both dancing and their families, Roxas and Namine talk together on the porch while Riku stands nearby to make sure they're not interrupted. Sora listens as they speak, if only because there's not much else to do inside his head. They share whispered confessions of their pasts as nobodies, and Sora remembers for the first time that they didn't actually know each other then. That they aren't friends, that the familiarity they hold with one another is just that left over affection between Kairi and Sora.

Namine tells Roxas of the Axel that she knew, the one who never let Marluxia too close to her, the one who let her go, the one who _noticed_ when she was trembling in her cell of a room, crayons snapped between her fingers. The one who told her stories of the outside—swho told her about his best friend, a boy with flaxen hair and blue eyes and a smile too bright to be fake. She tells him of her Axel, fierce and quick to defend, not afraid to stab someone in the back if it meant keeping her safe.

In return, Roxas tells her about the Axel that no one else got to see—the one who was scared of centipedes and hated the sensation of flying, the one who left his dirty socks on the floor and always misplaced his boots.

Sora listens to all this and doesn't even notice that Roxas is etching Axel's name there too, that he's carving the name into the stone of the balcony with Sora's magic—fire and electricity digging in until the name is smoldering. Flurry of the Dancing Flames.

He takes them on several honeymoons, skipping around the worlds so they can have one in the Deep Jungle, in Halloweentown, in Wonderland- wherever they'd like.

.

He's twenty five, and the worlds are aging. 

He's twenty five, and Roxas' dreams are now his. Roxas is bleeding into Sora—still there, still a presence, still _not entirely Sora_ , but things are changing.

He's twenty five, and he can't stop dreaming about Axel. Axel's hands on his hips, Axel's hands in Roxas' hair, Roxas' lips on his, Axel's cock against his lips. Everything's blending—he isn't sure who he wants, isn't sure whose touch he craves. He doesn't know if it's _Roxas_ who he wants to touch, Roxas' hair and Roxas' cock and Roxas' lips- or if he wants Axel, green eyes and knobby knees and pale, pale thighs that he remembers wrapping around Roxas' hips.

He's lonely, with just Roxas, and he knows it.

Riku and Kairi come with him sometimes, and it's nice to have their keyblades, their hearts resonating with his. Nice to not have to worry about a wayward heartless getting him in the back. But something about it bothers him, because they are happy and in love, and he doesn't know what he wants. They snatch kisses in the co-pilot's seat and in the back of the ship, in their shared room at whatever world they're in and Sora—well, Sora has his dreams and doesn't know what he wants.

Sora has Roxas' voice in his ear as he wraps his hand around his cock, he has Roxas urging him, "yeah, that's it, Sora, keep going," and on the good nights he has Roxas in that endless white dream space. Roxas' hands and hips and cheeks and golden hair and he can feel Roxas pressing inside of him, Roxas wrapping his own hands around Sora's cock and Roxas' breath against his neck. It's Roxas who digs his teeth into Sora's shoulder when he comes, Roxas who kisses the spot better afterward. Roxas, who grins breathlessly and sinks back onto _Sora's_ cock. Roxas who rides him, mouthing Axel's name into his neck until he comes. But he still wakes up alone wishing that Roxas' marks were still on his skin.

When Sora is twenty six, word reaches him of a mage—a jester—a fire eater♥red hair and green eyes and a smirk that could win over the devil himself. Something goes still in his chest and he isn't sure if it's Roxas or him that stops breathing.

.

It isn't Axel. It isn't Lea either.

They keep searching.

.

The worlds are aging, Sora's aging, and inside his head, even Roxas is getting older.

.

Riku and Kairi have a baby girl. She has Riku's pale hair and Kairi's eyes- her smile, his dimples. She's beautiful and when he sees her, Sora falls a little bit in love with this baby who isn't quite his.

They name her Namine and tell Sora that they've already made him her godfather.

Roxas is a ball of happy warmth in his chest, and when he opens his mouth to speak, it's Roxas who asks quietly, "Can I hold her?"

On paper, she has one godfather. It would look silly, after all, to name the same person twice. But later—they'll tell her that she has two.

.

When he's twenty eight, the darkness surges again. They snuff it out early, his keyblade in his left hand and Roxas' in his right, Xion's a presence in the back of his head, there if he needs it. When a Soldier gets him around the back of the head, knocking him into unconsciousness, it's Roxas who surfaces and finishes off the rest.

Together, they beat it back.

.

The dream space is bleeding color. Roxas says that if he tries hard enough, he can make things there. He calls it landscaping, and laughs.

Sora's dreams are bleeding too, dribbling into reality. He can almost feel Roxas' kisses at the nape of his neck as Roxas wraps their fingers around his cock. Roxas purrs inside their head, "When he comes back, you're going to kiss him," and "when he comes back you're going to pin him up against this gummi ship and fuck him until he can't remember his name," and when Sora comes, he sobs Axel's name through his orgasm.

.

Thirty.

.

Thirty-one.

.

When they find him, it's almost anticlimactic. 

They find him in Radiant Garden, leaning against the walls in the Crystal Fissure, a flame flickering at his fingertips. He's—well, he _hasn't_ aged much, though he seems different. Red hair, though it's loose and faintly wavy around his shoulders- eyes more blue than green, no tattoos, skin a shade or two darker- but his expression is all Axel. It's definitely Roxas who stops breathing this time, gone quiet in Sora's head when Axel turns and grins at them.

"Sora," he greets, and as per usual, when Sora opens his mouth it's Roxas who says, "You asshole," and punches him in the face.

Things change. Roxas is still bleeding over into him, the dream space is shrinking as much as it's obtaining color, and Axel- well, Axel is still Axel. Their Axel.

Sora knows what he wants.

 

 

In the end, Sora brought Axel back so maybe, just maybe he can bring Roxas back too.


End file.
